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Keep Shift-Start Queues Clear with Auto Awaiting Response

When a new shift begins, agents should be able to focus on customers who are actively waiting. In practice, the queue often contains many conversations that were started during non-working hours. Those customers may have stepped away long before the team came online.

Flowcall's auto mark awaiting response setting helps teams start the day with a cleaner queue. It can move older conversations out of the live queue, send a message to let customers know agents are now available, and bring the conversation back only when the customer replies.

When to Use This Recipe​

Use this setup if your team has defined working hours and customers can start conversations while agents are offline. It is especially useful for WhatsApp, live chat, Instagram, or any channel where customers expect a near-real-time response once the team is available.

For example:

  1. Business hours end at 8:00 PM.
  2. Customers continue starting chats after hours.
  3. The next shift starts at 9:00 AM.
  4. Agents see a large queue of conversations that may no longer be active.

Without automation, agents usually have to open each old conversation, send a message such as "our team is available now," and then mark the ticket as awaiting the customer's response. This is repetitive work, and it makes the queue look busier than it really is.

What Flowcall Automates​

With auto awaiting response enabled, Flowcall can:

  • Identify tickets that have been waiting longer than the configured duration.
  • Mark those tickets as awaiting response, so they leave the active queue.
  • Send an availability message to the customer.
  • Return the ticket to the queue when the customer replies.
  • Stagger outbound messages based on shift timing and batching rules, so old conversations do not all re-enter the queue at once.

The result is a cleaner agent queue and a better customer experience: customers are invited to continue when they are ready, while agents are not forced to manually clear every after-hours conversation.

Start with a threshold that matches your channel behavior. A common starting point is 30 minutes: if a ticket has been waiting longer than 30 minutes when agents become available, Flowcall can mark it as awaiting response and send the customer message.

Tune the threshold after observing how customers respond:

  • Use a shorter threshold when customers expect live support and old chats are unlikely to continue.
  • Use a longer threshold when customers often step away and return later in the same session.
  • Review first response time, queue volume, and reopened tickets after enabling the setting.

Customer Message​

Use a short message that tells the customer agents are available and that replying will continue the conversation.

Hi, our agents are available now. Please reply here if you still need help and we will continue from this conversation.

Keep the message clear and action-oriented. Avoid making the customer repeat context; Flowcall keeps the conversation history attached to the ticket.

Preventing a Second Queue Spike​

If every old conversation receives the availability message at the exact start of the shift, many customers may reply at once. That can create a second queue spike.

Use message batching to spread notifications across the shift-start window. For example, instead of sending 300 messages at 9:00 AM, Flowcall can send them gradually so returning customers are distributed across available agent capacity.

This is useful when different teams or agents start at different times. The message schedule can follow the shift plan, helping the queue ramp up smoothly instead of all at once.

You can configure this behavior under Settings → Ticket Behavior.